


All Things Have Small Beginnings

by grecianviolet



Category: Prometheus (2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-18
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2017-11-08 00:52:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/437334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grecianviolet/pseuds/grecianviolet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He knows he does not feel things the way human beings do. He tries. But he is not certain that he wants to be like them, anyway. An exploration of David: before, during, and after the events of Prometheus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

There are seventeen crew members aboard the _Prometheus_. It is one of the largest, most expensive scientific explorations of the deep reaches of space that has ever been launched. Every pound of equipment, gear, and rations has been scrutinized for maximum efficiency, in order to save fuel.

Motion in space may be unimpeded by friction, but _Prometheus_ still needs its thrusters to maneuver around stellar and planetary gravitational wells. There are also the myriad systems—life support, communications, science labs, and so on—that must have fuel to function. Two and a half years of travel, even at minimal energy levels, still consumes hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel.

Therefore, all crew members—save for Meredith Vickers, of course—had a strict limit of one bag of personal items weighing only twenty kilos. This requirement caused much grumbling during embarkation, as some crew had to toss out belongings that exceeded weight capacity.

David was the one who oversaw this procedure, enforcing the weight rules even when crew members fussed. He saw their black looks and heard the mutters, but none of these affected him in the least. He needed neither their affection nor their respect. The rules were the rules, in place for very good reasons, and he would not jeopardize Mr. Weyland's last voyage just so their biologist could hold on to an original copy of Darwin's _Origin of Species_.

The muttering grew louder when they saw crate after crate loaded onto the ship for David's personal use. Again, he ignored them. He would be the one to stay awake during their long voyage into the heart of space. He would monitor their life signs and ensure that none of them fell into brain death during their long cryogenic sleep.

If there was anyone onboard who deserved extra weight allowances to keep himself busy, it was David.

_Three months, sixteen days, twenty-two hours and fourteen minutes later_

David segments his days into a strict schedule. Were he an ordinary human, he supposed by now he would have fallen into anarchy; rising, sleeping, eating, and studying whenever he felt like it. But he was not human. And even among androids, he was not ordinary.

After "waking" in the morning, he makes the rounds of the cryo-bay, checking each pod to make sure that respiration, cardiac, and neurological functions are normal for each of the sixteen human crew.

He himself does not sleep, of course, but he has gotten into the habit of disconnecting himself for two hours a night. At first, he switched off for a full eight hours, to give himself an idea of what "sleep" might feel like. Once he realized, however, that sleep without dreams was meaningless, he reduced the time spent "asleep". But it is a way to pass the time, and he needs that...insofar as he really _needs_ anything.

After checking the crew, he always goes to Mr. Weyland, whose cryo-pod needs closer attention. It is not only a stasis machine; it is helping to prolong the man's life, and therefore requires constant calibration to administer different medications in varying levels to combat the cancer ravaging his system.

Some of David's original programming—back when he had just learned to speak in complete sentences—had been on the subject of cancer treatments. It is familiar territory for him, and caring for Mr. Weyland always makes him feel comfortable. So much of his time these days is devoted to absorbing new information that it is restful—or what he thinks "restful" is like—to do something familiar.

After these initial rounds, the next six hours of his day are spent in going over the records recorded by the Institute of Archaeological and Anthropological Studies. He sits with Dr. Ranjit and learns how to decipher and pronounce dead languages from Earth cultures of millennia past. Though it is his duty to study everything the Institute offers, he develops certain preferences and aversions.

He likes Hawaiian, for example; the syllables move in regular beats, just like the notes in the symphonies he enjoys hearing. He does not care for classical Chinese, as the tones remind him of wailing cats. Latin is also soothing. While doing his rounds in the morning, he sometimes intones lines from Latin prayers, or recites Cicero.

He particularly enjoys Marcus Aurelius. The philosophy of the stoics is very appealing.

This is what makes David different from other androids. He is one of the first to have a kind of self-actualization subroutine. It enables him to act without specific situational programming, thereby giving him a flexibility and utility unmatched among existing AI models. He can make plans and schedules and carry them out, with no one's authorization save his own. Of course, he has been programmed with certain duties (monitoring the crew, caring for Mr. Weyland) but outside of that, he is "free".

Even the engineers who first crafted this program did not fully understand how it would work. David does not understand it either. Freedom for an engineered being? An artificial construct? A human simulacrum?

Part of his brain is always working on these metaphysical problems. Everything that he does and thinks that is not a part of his existing programming, he tucks away in a file labeled "Meaning".

Eventually, he will understand why and what he is—at least, he believes he will understand—but for now, it is nothing more than an interesting puzzle to take up some time.

After language lessons, he checks all the cryo-pods again, and makes any necessary changes to Mr. Weyland's medication. He also goes to the bridge and makes sure that all ship functions are within normal parameters.

They always are.

Sometimes he opens the steel shields over the transparent aluminum-alloy windows, and looks at the stars. He does not do this often—it would waste too much fuel.

Then it is time for some "fun". As with the languages he studies, there are certain sports and musical instruments that he enjoys playing, as well as certain movies that he likes to watch. He likes basketball (he can spin the ball on his forefinger for 5 minutes and 27 seconds and make free throws from anywhere on the court) and table tennis.

Sports are easier to excel at than music. He can play the cello and violin well enough, but even he can hear the difference between a performance of his and one of say, Yo Yo Ma. He plays the notes with technical perfection, but can manage no emotional inflection. He does not feel what a human might feel upon playing the same notes. He listens to recordings and copies them, but he knows it is not the same.

This is the kind of discovery that he files in the folder called "Meaning".

He spends six hours a day in activities of this nature, always pushing himself to try more complicated maneuvers in his sports, or tackle more complex pieces of music. He does not know whether this drive towards perfection is part of his programming, or part of his personality—if he even has a personality—but he does know that it makes him feel a sense of accomplishment when he performs at a higher level than he was formerly able to do.

Then he makes another round through the cryo-bays.

He always ends his day with a film or two. At first, he went through his archive in alphabetical order, watching one after the other, unable to sort quality from garbage. The variety of human behaviors, expressions, and emotions portrayed in each movie was bewildering, and he needed time—more so than with languages or sports—to determine what kinds of films he found appealing.

In the end, it wasn't a particular genre he enjoyed. He found that he liked certain actors or actresses.

He had just finished watching _Caligula_ —an altogether mediocre film—when he felt compelled to watch it again, just to see the performances of the actor playing Tiberius. Then he watched it a third time.

After that, he abandoned an alphabetical approach to movies and watched everything he could find with the actor Peter O'Toole. He did not "sleep" at all that night, and abandoned his usual routine the following day so that he could watch all thirteen in the archives.

He did not understand why watching _Lawrence of Arabia_ was so fascinating—even after the tenth, or twentieth, or thirty-seventh viewing—but he knew that if he were ever to become a fully-actualized human, he wanted to have some of the ineffable qualities he saw in Peter O'Toole.

_Eight months, twenty-four days, sixteen hours and thirty-eight minutes later_

It has now been more than a year since _Prometheus_ left Earth, and David has had enough time to understand some of the things that puzzled him earlier in the trip.

He knows what boredom is, for example. It is a shadow that clings to him every day, resting around his shoulders soon after he wakes in the morning, and only leaving once he has disconnected himself at night. He now sleeps for four hours a day—a concession made only after much personal castigation. He still regards it as a weakness, an acknowledgement that he needs to care for himself, if only a little.

It is an admission that he is not indestructible, and such an admission is troubling.

David is not afraid of pain. He has conducted experiments on his own body—cutting his biosynthetic flesh, or touching the hot surface of a plasma conduit—and knows that he is physically capable of feeling pain, but it does not frighten him. He is actually fascinated by it; the different physical sensations that various trauma present.

When he first started these experiments, he was actually in a little danger of overdoing it. Now he limits himself to one new sensation a week—it gives his mind another thing to puzzle over, in imagining new ways in which he might feel pain.

At least pain is exciting. Boredom, however, is crushing.

It is one particularly black morning that David gives in to a temptation that has dogged him since first arriving on _Prometheus_.

One of the neurological functions David monitors is the REM patterns of the crew. A natural sleep cycle runs through four levels of sleep, and REM is the most important. It is what keeps the brain active and functioning, and adequate REM sleep is vital during a cryogenic period.

During the early stages of deep space exploration, entire crews would die with no physical symptoms of distress. It was only years later that scientists came to understand that sleep (especially REM sleep) was the explanation. The human brain would wither without the stimulation of dreams.

The cryo-pods are all compatible with David's artificial cortex. When he engages the system, he can see into the crewmember's dreams.

Part of his ethical programming dealt with the concept of shame. He knows that invading another's privacy is a shameful thing to do. It is voyeuristic and strange and not something a person should do.

He knows this.

He does it anyway.

David knows enough to set rules, however. New stimulation is always hard for him to resist, so he limits himself. One crewmember a day (males only, and _never_ Mr. Weyland), and only for fifteen minutes at a time.

It becomes the thing he anticipates most in his routine.

At first, what he sees is intensely disappointing. All his life, he has tried to become as human as possible, without really understanding what "human" is. He has read literature, listened to symphonies, studied architecture and art and philosophy…all the highest achievements of mankind. Though he often failed to understand these things from an aesthetic standpoint, he still admired them, admired the struggles that humans went through in order to create them.

In seeing their dreams, however, David sees humanity in its naked, unvarnished state. It is—to use a literary phrase he does not quite understand—a bitter disappointment.

He sees jealousy in a crewmember who envied another for getting a position he was not good enough to get. He sees anger in a crewmember who dreams of beating a man to death over a trivial matter. He sees lust…lust from nearly every single person onboard, as they dream of people they could never hope to win in reality.

These sights harden him. For a while, they disrupt his routine. He abandons his musical practice, his sports…everything except his language studies (his programming is too strong to allow him to stop).

Even _Lawrence of Arabia_ has a sour edge to it now. As he watches, he cannot help but wonder what sort of dreams Peter O'Toole had, and the thought is unsettling.

Without his self-imposed goals and his familiar routine, David finds more and more of his time is taken up in confronting the massive amounts of data in his "Meaning" folder. The bits and pieces stored away after more than a year on his own is a tangled mess, and sorting through it for some kind of order takes time.

But now he finds himself confronted with the question: _is it worth it?_ He has seen into the dreams of humanity. He knows the best and the worst that man is capable of. So he must ask himself…does he even want to be like them, anymore? Or should he become something better, something perfected?

After thinking of these questions, he considers nothing else for days. Finally, he comes to the conclusion that he needs more information.

He is programmed to admire and respect Mr. Weyland; Mr. Weyland, after all, created him and views him as a son. Could Mr. Weyland be the same as the other crewmembers on board…petty and rotting inside?

And women…David has only explored the dreams of the men. Of these, only Charles Holloway has admirable qualities to him. He has noble aspirations for this mission, and great dreams for the future—even if those dreams deal a little too much with fortune and personal glory for true nobility.

Considering all these things, David arrives at a conclusion: if he is to condemn humanity and renounce their ways, he will need to see the dreams of Mr. Weyland and the women on board.

So he breaks his rules.

He first looks into the dreams of his sister, Meredith Vickers. He is almost shocked to find a creature who is like him; cold, analytical, and detached. Some of her dreams, however, are wracked with violent emotions…emotions so strong he finds himself almost overwhelmed by them.

She hates their father, doubts and loathes herself, and is jealous of David. He does not understand the motivations behind these feelings, but she feels them with every fiber of her being.

The Scottish scientist—Kate Ford—offers little new information beyond what he has already learned from the dreams of the men. She has a son, however, and dreams of him often. Her maternal feelings—love, pride, worry—are new and stimulating. He dips into her dreams more often than the others, hoping to see the child's face each time.

After all this, however, he discovers the dreams of Dr. Elizabeth Shaw. And things change.

_Two months, nineteen days, four hours and thirty-five minutes later_

Seeing into a dream is a disorienting thing. The viewer of the dream is aware of both himself and the dreamer in different proportions. But the dreamer is always the one in control; the viewer sees and feels only what the dreamer sees and feels. Sometimes, dreamers see the dream from their own eyes. At other times, they view the dream's action in the third person. Often, the dreamer takes on a different persona entirely.

The first dream David sees in Elizabeth Shaw's mind is a dream of her father's death, and he cannot escape from her mind.

He feels a physical weight in his chest and is disturbed. The weight is not painful—not entirely—it is as though his chest is being pressed between two boards, the pressure increasing with each passing second.

He looks through her eyes at a face that he knows and does not know. David has never seen this man before…but Elizabeth has seen this man every day for her entire life. This man has shaped her—her beliefs, her convictions, her higher nature and finer feelings—and he is her world.

And he is gone.

She cannot wake him, and does not try. But David's hands twitch; he longs to reach out and touch him, try to shake him awake, to make him speak and laugh and _live_ again. This man is everything. Without him…is life even possible?

The dream ends as Elizabeth's mind drops into deeper sleep.

David rarely has physical responses to the shadows of emotion that he feels when witnessing dreams. Pain, for example, does not usually make him flinch. But his hands are shaking when he takes off the visor, and it takes three hours for the pressure in his chest to disappear. The sensation lingers for so long that he runs a diagnostic to make sure that none of his systems are malfunctioning.

There is nothing amiss.

Somewhere, he thinks, his programmers should rejoice. Their little wooden puppet is becoming a real boy.

The next dream is more cheerful. Young Elizabeth stands next to her father, her hands resting on a rough-hewn wooden pew in a small church in Kenya. Her thoughts are a melodic blend of Swahili and English, and there is chanting in the air.

_Baba yetu, yetu uliye  
Mbinguni yetu, yetu, amina!  
Baba yetu, yetu, uliye  
Jina lako litukuzwe_

She and her father sing. The Lord's Prayer…they are worshipping. David has studied religion, but has never understood the comfort that humans profess finding in it. Inside Elizabeth's dreams, he understands.

She looks up at her father's face (and he feels the pressure again because the joy she feels is short-lived; he will die, they all die) and he feels her certainty that God is real and that He loves her just as her father does.

Over time, he learns many things from Elizabeth.

_Three weeks, six days, two hours and eleven minutes later_

David has regained a sense of normalcy. Elizabeth has given him hope that humanity has redeeming qualities after all, and he has resumed his normal routine. The only change he has made since dipping into the dreams of the crew is that he now spends a small amount of time each day—fifteen minutes to an hour, generally—looking into their minds.

His favorite is still Elizabeth. However, he also looks at Holloway, Vickers, Janek and Ford occasionally as well.

He has still not looked into Weyland's mind. Something makes him shy away. He would say it was fear, but David does not fear anything.

The days pass smoothly, now. David continues to improve himself as much as he can, and now he has a new motivation. Before, his only goal was self-improvement, imagining how he would like to be. Now—though he does not often consciously acknowledge it—he imagines what _she_ will think of him, when she awakes. He does not want to seem…disappointing. It is an odd thought, since she only met him briefly during embarkation and probably formed as little an opinion of him as he formed of her during those first moments, but still…it is the truth.

He wants her to be impressed.

He even has a routine for dream watching: today is Holloway's day. When David puts on the visor and activates the interface, he wonders momentarily if something has gone wrong.

Then Holloway's dream-eyes open and David _sees_.

David does not need to breathe. He can simulate breathing—to put the humans at ease—but, like blinking, it is a purely cosmetic procedure.

However, as Holloway's fingers move inside Elizabeth and she draws a long, keening breath—head thrown back, pale throat exposed—David finds himself breathing in rhythm with her. His fingers curl as Holloway's do, and he feels the soft flesh contract around them as she moans and pulls him in for a kiss.

Suddenly, David is breathing hard and his face feels strangely warm and he disconnects the visor because something _must_ be wrong with him this time. He keeps his hands flat on the cryo-pod as his heart pounds and the diagnostic runs, but again, there is nothing physically wrong with him.

But he feels…

He feels…

_Twelve months, two days, nine hours and eleven minutes later_

The crew will come out of stasis tomorrow. David's artificial heart beats slightly faster at the thought. A year ago, he would have been confused at this strange reaction in his body, but now he understands himself better.

He is excited.

Still, routine is not something to be lightly dismissed. He studies his languages, plays basketball (he can make one-handed free throws while riding a bicycle, now) makes the rounds of all the cryo-pods, and celebrates by opening the bridge windows and staring at the moon that has been the goal of these many long months.

He finds a greater portion of his mind, however, is stuck on a looping thought:

_I will meet her tomorrow. Tomorrow, I will meet her._

And many variations of the same.

Because it is his last day alone, he does all his favorite things. He watches _Lawrence of Arabia_. He sings _Baba Yetu_ , pleased as the sound of his perfectly-pitched baritone echoes through the corridors of the ship. And he looks into Elizabeth's dreams, even though it is not her day.

Sorrow is a familiar companion to him when he enters her mind. Even though she may dream of her living father, her adult mind knows that he is no longer alive. Every dream she has is tinted with sadness. The fact that she is witnessing a funeral in this dream—encamped in the Namibian desert, this time—only makes the feeling stronger.

But she believes what her father tells her, about heaven. So the sight of the funeral does not distress her. She even lies awake that night, thinking about what heaven might be like, and if she might find it one day—up there, amongst the stars.

David does not believe in either God or heaven. Even after inhabiting her innermost mind for more than a year, her convictions have still not carried over to him. She believes because her father believed. Perhaps…

What does his father believe?

He has resisted temptation for so long. Today will be the last chance he has to really understand his father. David walks down the hall, steps slower than usual, for he is not entirely resolved.

Should he look, and risk the disappointment?

He stands outside the doorway, and considers.

()()()()()

Like many who have seen _Prometheus_ , I was absolutely fascinated by the character of David. I didn't realize I wanted to write a story about him until I read the story _David_ , by wond-rwait. Please leave a note if you enjoyed…I'm planning on making this a three to four part story.


	2. Chapter Two

Thanks for your comments on chapter one, they were hugely appreciated! I hope you enjoy this next chapter as much.

()()()()()

He is happy that Miss Vickers is the first one to wake. Though it was momentarily surprising to see an empty pod and the trail of wet footprints leading into the lifeboat, he is not shocked. Meredith Vickers possesses an iron will; this trait she shares with her father, and to some extent, David himself. But she has a determination that surpasses his own—something that should be impossible in an organic life-form.

He greets her coolly, using her last name. Once, right after his activation, when he had learned about the relationships between family members, he tried to call her "sister". She…reacted badly. Though only fourteen years old at the time, she had a strong arm and managed to fracture his arm with a metal baseball bat while he was deactivated. Afterwards, his skeletal structure was recast with poly-adamantium composite and she could no longer damage him.

David had already gotten the message, however. He never tried to presume on their "family relationship" ever again.

So he is glad that she is awake, but only because after assuring himself that she needs no further attention, he can return to the cryo-bay, where all the other pods are deactivating and their inhabitants are coming back to life, vomiting up the fluids that have soured in their stomachs over the two-year journey.

Had Miss Vickers needed him, he would have had to stay and tend to her. One of the basic rules of his programming is to care for the members of the Weyland family. Mr. Weyland is the most important, but Meredith—though nothing more than the product of a brief affair between Weyland and the model Sandra Vickers—is his next priority.

As it is, however, he can put a towel around Dr. Shaw's—and he must remember to think of her as Dr. Shaw—shoulders and talk her through the reanimation process. He knows that this is her first time on a deep-space mission, and knows that she has never been in cryo-stasis before. Awakening after two years of dark, dreaming sleep is a disorienting process, so he is given to understand. Muscles are weak, brain functions are slow, and hunger drowns out most other concerns.

With his hands on her shoulders, he can feel her muscle tone and is pleased to note that she does not appear to have lost much during the voyage. Her legs look strong as well; she should be up and walking in no time.

"It's perfectly natural," he assures her, leaning forward as she throws up again. He helps her shaking hands steady the bowl that catches her vomit, "Coming out of stasis is a disorienting process, but it will pass."

Even weak and miserable as she must be, Dr. Shaw still turns to look at him, nodding thanks with a small smile turning the edges of her mouth. Most people would not think to thank an android, as David well knows. To most people, he is nothing more than a computer, albeit one slightly more useful for his enhanced motor functions.

But Elizabeth Shaw is not most people. She smiles and nods, and gags and coughs wetly into the bowl.

"Hey, Elly," Holloway calls from the other side of the room, his voice pale and rasping, "We made it, baby." He toasts her with his glass of spinach-kale yogurt.

Elizabeth turns away from David and sighs, the sound like the wind through branches. David looks at Holloway through narrowed eyes and feels his lips thin. The involuntary motions surprise him, but he thinks of how his face must look and thinks:

_So, this is jealousy. Interesting._

()()()()()

Though boredom and loneliness dogged him relentlessly during the journey, a few minutes in the mess hall with the exhausted, testy crew make David think that he might soon long for the uninterrupted hours of silence that used to be his.

He had not been expecting much of the crew—indeed, he _could_ not expect much of the crew, after seeing their dreams. Janek still amuses him, with his Christmas tree trappings (5.3 kilos in total) hauled so far from where such things could matter. Ford seems harmless enough…but she is an employee of Mr. Weyland—and an employee in his inner circle—so the word "harmless" could not possibly apply.

But the relentless narrow-mindedness and self-interest of the rest of the crew is galling. David cannot understand it. These men and women volunteered to be flung an unimaginable distance from home to be the first to explore an uncharted region of space…but now that they have arrived, they sulk and whine and think only of money and of returning home again.

He wonders if they are all blind to the wonders of the galaxy. Then he wonders if they are blind by reason of their nature or by willful ignorance.

Their behavior towards each other is curt, nasty, and vulgar. Except for the crew that knew each other before embarking—Janek and his two pilots, Chance and Ravel, for example—no one seems interested in making friends…or even in being polite to one another. They sit in the mess hall as private islands, wrapping their prejudices and pains around them like shrouds.

Their behavior towards himself is, for the most part, unsurprising. David has unusual auditory capabilities, and can listen to all the conversations in the room simultaneously, and parse out each different conversation almost instantaneously. He hears the usual epithets—robot, tank, toaster, et cetera—and the usual surmises about his nature—does he feel, sleep, eat, fuck, et cetera—but is most surprised by the conversation between Drs. Shaw and Holloway.

"I can't believe they thought we needed a goddamn robot."

"Charlie, all deep space missions come with one aboard. On a two-year mission like this it's safer to have one. Who knows how many times he's saved our lives?"

_Thirteen_ , David thinks in answer, his brain immediately pulling up the incident reports filed in the ship's main computer. A meteor breeched the hull, a plasma conduit rupture, an unexplained gravity well…

"Anyway, we should be grateful. It can't have been easy, being the only one awake for all this time."

"I know. It's just…don't you think they're a little bit creepy? How they're so close to being real, but you can tell they're just…not."

"And I thought _I_ was the old-fashioned one between the two of us. Didn't you laugh at me when you found out I'd never been off-planet before?"

"Well, never having been on a transport is one thing; being able to accept a human analogue is another."

"He's very nice, you know. He helped me out in the cryo-bay, unlike _some_ people I could name…"

"Elly, if I'd stood up I would've fallen over. You weren't the only one gagging up their toenails, you know."

"Oh, very nice!"

Their gentle teasing continues and they sit closer, relishing being together after such a long separation. David's lips are tight again and he has to consciously force them to relax. Focusing on her helps; Elizabeth looks so happy, so peaceful, sitting in the curve of Holloway's arm. Her eyes are wide and luminous and the corners of her mouth are softly upturned. In the sterile blues and whites of _Prometheus_ , she is a welcome contrast of earthy reds and browns.

She rests her head on his shoulder, soft curls feathered on her cheek and throat, and closes her eyes, smiling into the darkness.

She says, "Oh, Charlie…can you believe we're really here? Can you just _imagine_ what we're going to find?"

Holloway answers, after kissing her soundly on the top of her head, "We're gonna track down your god, baby. We're gonna find some answers."

_He says "your god", not "my god"_ , David thinks, considering. It makes sense; nothing in Holloway's file suggests any kind of religious belief or affiliation. But Elizabeth's— _Dr. Shaw's_ , he corrects himself—is full of it; she is the true believer.

He has seen the original conversation between Mr. Weyland and Drs. Shaw and Holloway, recorded over three years ago. Holloway was the smooth talker, with facts and data and graphs, but Shaw was the one who convinced Mr. Weyland that God could really be _found_. Her belief inspired something in Mr. Weyland—inspired a hope that she never had.

Mr. Weyland hopes not only that God can be found but that God can be forced to _give_.

Speaking of which…

Mr. Weyland is too weak to be awakened until the last possible moment. However, upon crossing the destination threshold, David manipulated the special settings of his cryo-pod to bring his brain into a kind of suspended animation. His body is still asleep, for all intents and purposes, but his brain can respond to questioning and is aware of David's neural link.

He will want to know what is happening.

()()()()()

He finds her as fascinating as he finds Peter O'Toole. She is self-possessed in a way that few other people are; she knows herself to the point where the challenges that the crewmembers fling at her beliefs mean nothing. Few humans are so untroubled by self-doubt.

Even Miss Vickers, with her implacable hatred of him and Mr. Weyland, is undone by doubt. It is, in fact, her greatest weakness. David knows her fears; she is afraid that Mr. Weyland is only trying to extend his life because he doubts her ability to run his empire according to his wishes. He knows this not by watching her dreams (although they confirm his observations) but by watching her actions.

Standing with her arms crossed, Elizabeth—he gives himself permission to stop thinking of her as Dr. Shaw—looks at the rude geologist and the scornful biologist with her limpid eyes, staring them down with a cool half-smile, seeming to mock them for their weakness. Fifield and Millburn are no match for her; they back down, muttering to themselves and each other, but offer no more direct challenges.

_The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts._

He almost speaks the words aloud. Like Peter O'Toole, Elizabeth Shaw has created her reality out of the sheer force of her will, and it is one that most mortals do not have the depth of faith to aspire to.

There are humans who cling to religious faith because they are afraid to see the world as it is. They are the doubters, the deniers, the ignorant…and they are worthy of the contempt the crew displays. Anyone with eyes to see, however, can see that Elizabeth is not one of those. She admits that she _chooses_ to believe in what she does. Just as Millburn believes in his deity Darwin, she believes in her God.

Unlike Millburn, however, she is unshaken by the disbelief of others; whereas he can hardly credit the fact that she can dismiss his orthodoxy offhand. That is admirable, and all due to her self-possession.

Despite David's admiration of her faith, he still has to question it. She calls the Engineers' message "an invitation". And an invitation it might be, left by the progenitors of a race in the hope that once their message had been received and understood, their long-abandoned children would be capable of accepting it.

But at a distance of at least thirty-five thousand years…would the Engineers be pleased with the fruit grown from their seed?

He knows that he is in a better position to ponder these questions than most. After all, the original AI was created within the last hundred years, and despite the many uses and benefits an AI offers, he is not naïve enough to think that they will last much longer than another hundred years.

Humans are not comfortable around him. They know that something is not…quite right, no matter how hard he tries to blend in. And humans reject what they fear. Even Mr. Weyland—his "father"—does not hide the fact that he believes David to be fundamentally flawed.

To humans, David has no soul. Although the concept of "soul" is so vague to begin with that he thinks he can make an argument in his favor, he knows that it is not an argument that many humans are likely to listen to.

Eventually, David fully expects humanity to turn on him and his kind.

So he will not be surprised if these Engineers—if any are still alive, that is—do the same to their children.

Still, he wishes he could believe in something with the same quiet faith with which Elizabeth believes in her God. He wonders if she would consider it blasphemous for him to believe in her with the same unwavering faith.

Because he does.

She turns her eyes upward, looking at the configuration of stars that brought her so far from home. She looks at the stars, and he looks at her.

()()()()()

Holloway scrambles into the pyramid like a child tripping down the stairs to open his presents on Christmas morning, slipping on the scree of dust and rocks at the structure's base. Elizabeth follows, but there is a shadow of reluctance about her. Her feet drag against the ground and her arms are tight to her sides; she moves slowly, slower even than the skeptics in the crew.

David is confused. He expected her to run ahead of them all, as eager as Holloway, not hang to the back as a naughty child does when summoned by an angry parent. Eventually, Holloway takes her by the hand and pulls her forward, his excitement contagious as a virus and Elizabeth is finally smiling.

Holloway looks, and catalogues, and exclaims over everything. Elizabeth is quiet; only her widening eyes betray how awed she is by the things around her.

David knows what Holloway is thinking. He is thinking of an appointment at a prestigious university; maybe even a distinguished chair named after him. He is thinking of tenure, and a small house in some golden countryside—such country as still remains on Earth—and quiet mornings spent in bed with Elizabeth, soft and warm, beside him.

In Holloway's dreams, there are always children completing this fantasy. Dark auburn-haired children, long-limbed and adventurous. A boy—Henry, named for Holloway's father—and sometimes a baby girl with huge brown eyes…just like Elly's.

There are children in Elizabeth's dreams, too. Round faces with shining eyes, soft skin, plump arms and chubby fingers. Flashes. Silent, brief images accompanied by such sharp longing that even David feels tight-chest sorrow on her behalf.

But she never dreams of such quiet domesticity. She is always in the Polynesian islands, or the Scottish moors, or the Australian deserts, camping and living under the sun, wind, and rain. Elizabeth knows that the country is disappearing, and she crusades to save it the only way she knows how.

David wonders if the two of them would be quite so close if each knew the other's mind as well as he does. He wonders if Elizabeth would love Holloway with so much devotion if she knew how he sometimes resents her sterility. Or if she knew about his greed—his longing for fame and fortune, despite their academic field—or his willingness to abandon Elizabeth's crusade once he has the security that fame and fortune bring.

Then he realizes why Holloway is surging ahead and Elizabeth is desperate to hang back. As with many other things, they view this expedition in fundamentally different ways:

Holloway is looking to make his name and secure his future.

Elizabeth is steeling herself to meet—and perhaps be judged by—her maker.

()()()()()

David has never felt panic. His artificial heart beats faster at times with various situational catalysts (excitement in meeting Elizabeth, shame over seeing her through Holloway's eyes, for example) but the kind of blind fear that makes Holloway fling himself out of the airlock after Elizabeth without a thought for his own safety is something that David may never know.

However, when his hands move smoothly at the direction of his brain and he can fasten himself to the winch in under fifteen seconds when everyone else is still standing around yelling as the electrical storm shrieks around them, he thinks this fearlessness may be one of his best qualities.

The violence of the storm is shocking; it blows his body about as though he were nothing more than a leaf caught on the breeze. Chunks of rock scrape his helmet, some smaller fragments digging themselves in like cat's claws, desperate to reach his eyes and skin. The air is full of the tremulous crackle of static electricity and it makes his circuits tingle.

David breathes faster and he feels charged, somehow…more awake than he has ever been. The sensation is addictive, much more so than pain; he feels as though he could run and jump longer and farther than ever before. Moreover, he _wants_ to run and jump; to indulge in movement without purpose, movement for its own sake.

For all his sports practice, for all his programmed athleticism, this is the first time he has felt the joy of motion, of simply being.

He feels _alive_.

It is curious how he can feel positively about a storm that is so deadly to Elizabeth. She is crying, little hitching, breathless sobs that catch in her throat but are still loud enough to register in the microphone of her suit. The sound steadies him—takes some of the euphoria out of the chaos—and he focuses on his hands. It takes him less than ten seconds to connect her and Holloway to his harness, and then they are flying backwards, buffeted by rocks and wind and sand.

The trip takes only five seconds, and they are safe.

David is only momentarily disappointed in the loss of that tingling sensation. Elizabeth is alive, and that is far more important. He leans forward, but Holloway is already there.

"What the hell was that, Elly? You go and almost get yourself killed, and for what? A—a," he stammers and gestures wildly, "a head of a _thing_ that died two thousand years ago? Is that worth our lives?"

Elizabeth staggers to her feet, her eyes closed and tears sliding down her face. Her heartbeat is so fast that even David's auditory systems have difficulty distinguishing one beat from the next. He wonders if he should sedate her—to avoid hyperventilation and tachycardia—but she steadies herself against the wall and takes three deep, steady breaths.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes," she replies, eyes still closed. "Thank you, David. You saved our lives."

Perhaps neither of them will believe there is any emotional truth behind what he says, but he means it all the same:

"It was my pleasure."


	3. Chapter Three

After the disaster with the Engineer head, Vickers snarls at them to clean up their mess, marching out of the lab with a sharp clicking of heeled boots echoing angrily behind. Holloway follows, running irritated, impatient hands over his cropped scalp and blinking fast. David watches him go—rather, he watches Elizabeth watch him go. She spares a moment to look at his unsteady pace as he leaves, then turns back to the mess under the containment shield, closes her eyes, and sighs. He and Ford both stand, silent and waiting until she tells them how to proceed.

 

“We should—” her voice stumbles and she clears her throat, “We should run a full genetic analysis. Ford, David,” she looks up, but avoids their eyes, “will you please prepare the slides for a full DNA sequencing?”

 

“Sure,” Ford says, moving hesitantly towards the quarantined remains, “For safety, maybe I should do this. I can wear the full suit and you can lower the secondary shield behind me until I’ve finished the sampling and quarantined the whole area.”

 

“That may be a wise idea,” David offers, as Elizabeth hesitates, “since we are dealing with an alien physiology and bacterial contagions…we have no idea if our methods of containment have been effective. We should take all possible precautions.”

 

“Yes,” Elizabeth nods, taking a deep breath and straightening up, “do that. In fact, we should all wear suits; I’ll begin the process for sealing and decontaminating the room. David, would you please prepare the sequencer?”

 

He wishes he could help her, but this is once instance where his basic programming overrides any personal preferences. Mr. Weyland must be updated immediately with the most recent developments. Their discovery of the Engineers’ mortality will be particularly relevant. So although David is curious to see if Elizabeth’s theory about the Engineers’ influence on humanity’s development is accurate, he also anticipates seeing Mr. Weyland’s reaction to the supposed gods’ vulnerability.

 

So he apologizes, informing the two doctors that he is needed in other ship functions. Elizabeth nods, thanking him for his help. Ford glances at him quickly, then looks away. She knows where he is going; she has already been once to see Mr. Weyland.

 

It is a truth, though not the whole truth. While his normal operational parameters do generally forbid him from outright lying to humans, a lie of omission slips past his morality protocols. Even if it were a bald-faced lie—like saying the sky was green—he would have been able to say it if Mr. Weyland ordered him to.

 

And in this instance, Mr. Weyland has left explicit orders for him to do whatever necessary to keep his presence hidden from the majority of the crew. And that majority definitely includes Dr. Shaw.

 

He does not need to feel uncomfortable about this situation. Mr. Weyland is the money behind this not-inexpensive jaunt into space, and is by far more important in every way to a mere archaeologist. David does not need to feel uncomfortable; he knows this. The knowledge does not prevent him from feeling so, nonetheless. Elizabeth values honesty; if she discovers his lie…

 

He avoids thinking about what she would think in such an instance. It makes him feel as though he has failed in some primary function. He has not failed. Mr. Weyland’s presence is a secret. They have found the Engineers. And David has managed to secrete a sample of their mysterious product without anyone being the wiser. He knows Mr. Weyland will be pleased by his progress.

 

Objectively, he knows that Mr. Weyland’s pleasure far outweighs Elizabeth’s imaginary disappointment. He does not allow himself to think subjectively on this point. He must now go and make his report to his still-sleeping father.

 

As he walks down the hallway, pausing at each corridor junction to ensure he passes unnoticed, he considers the word. “Father” is probably the wrong term. He has none other to use; even Mr. Weyland occasionally called him “son”. In the video presentation to the crew however, he had said: “closest thing to a son”.

 

That would make the man himself David’s “closest thing to a father”.

 

Most human literature seems split in its opinion about fathers. Some great works have admirable ones; others have villainous ones. Fathers all across history have neglected their children, beaten them, abused them, taken advantage of them. Others meanwhile, inspired their offspring, teaching them the skills they needed to rise higher than they themselves ever did.

 

David has little in the way of personal experience to judge the truth of either side. On the one hand, he has Mr. Weyland’s example. What has he done to his children?

 

He considers—not for the first time—what Ms. Vickers would have been if she had been someone else’s child. She is so rotted with rage, jealousy, and self-doubt…David has difficulty in understanding the causes of human emotions, but even he realizes that many of these flaws stem from her father’s mingled neglect and belittlement.

 

The only other father David feels confident in thinking he knows firsthand—albeit through the medium of Elizabeth’s dreams—is the first Dr. Shaw. If there was ever a man who inspired his child to do great things, it was him. Elizabeth is a woman any father should be proud of.

 

And she has a soul. David is certain of this. If souls exist, that is…Elizabeth has one.

 

Drawing near the separated cryo-bay door, David pauses one last time before keying in his entry code. The door makes the room look like nothing more than a cold storage area; none of the crew would have reason to venture there. Even if they did, they would find a series of locks more sophisticated than any others on the _Prometheus_. Mr. Weyland has always known how to guard his secrets.

 

David hears the constant, even beeping of Mr. Weyland’s specially-modified pod the moment he enters the room. He has heard that sound so many times before that he does not have to wonder whether the man is still in a perfectly healthy stasis. So he proceeds directly to the task at hand.

 

Mr. Weyland’s dreamscape is different that Elizabeth’s, mostly because he has not been dreaming—or if so, only occasionally—since crossing the destination threshold. His consciousness is in a state of aware suspension; he knows where he is and what is happening, but experiences it all in an immediate _now_. It is a rather god-like state of mind, though one that seems to irritate the man. Every time David has contacted him since arriving, he has grown progressively more brittle.

 

It is no different now.

 

“David?” a shadowy self-representation stalks across the empty space of Weyland’s mind to greet him. “What’s going on?”

 

David acknowledges this pale version of his father—his god, in a way—with a gracious bow. “We found them, Sir. The Engineers were here, just as Dr. Shaw predicted.”

 

Weyland gave a cackling laugh. “I’ll be damned! I’d never have thought—but she was so certain, after all. Could’ve made anyone believe. Did you meet them, then? What do they have to say for themselves? Can they do it…save me?”

 

“We found evidence that they were here,” David clarifies, “and that this was an installation of some kind. However, the only physical remains we discovered date from approximately two thousand years ago. Whether any of their kind remain after such a long span has passed, we are not certain.”

 

“Well,” he mumbles under his breath, thinking. David waits; Mr. Weyland hates being interrupted. No matter how long it takes, David has learned to be silent until Mr. Weyland speaks again. So he waits.

 

“Well,” he repeats, “That’s not all you found, is it? What about records? What about their facilities, their technology? If you can read their language, we might be able to make a cure ourselves.”

 

“We found no evidence of medical facilities; however, their technology is sufficiently different from ours that appearances might have been deceiving. Also, we covered only 23% of the pyramid’s total interior space,” he recites the facts blandly, not daring to add any of his impressions to the account. Mr. Weyland dislikes being given anyone’s opinion; he prefers to form his own. “We did recover a recording of some kind of panic taking place among the residents of the pyramid; Dr. Shaw suspects there might have been some sort of outbreak.”

 

He then quickly summarizes his discovery of the holographic technology, the finding of the Engineer’s body, and the analysis of the head.

 

“Dr. Shaw is currently running a full DNA sequence to see how their genetic material compares to a human’s,” he wonders if she has found what she was looking for, and makes a note to access her notes from the ship’s computer the first opportunity he gets, “to verify her original hypothesis.”

 

Weyland hums again. “That’s not important,” he brushes aside the news of a potentially earth-changing discovery with the wave of a hand, “So, you have a vial of this…black ooze, you say? Huh. And it was sealed up in a storage room?”

 

“Yes,” he answers, “It is the only product we found that might give us a clue regarding this facility’s purpose.”

 

“Then it’s imperative we discover what it is and what it does. That’s your job, David. The next time you come to me, I want you to have something of value.”

 

David’s encoding interprets this immediately and feeds him the only appropriate response. Shame. “I apologize, Mr. Weyland,” he folds his hands and lowers his head, dropping his gaze away from the man’s wavering outline. He tries to alter the tone of his voice as well, but it is a challenge for him still, despite all his practice over the past few years.

 

“I thought it best to let you know about the day’s exploration before analyzing the contents of the vase.”

 

“Oh, it’s all right, David,” his tone is joking, but David does not raise his head, “Just remember what I’ve always told you: when you make a mistake, fix it. We must find out what this substance does. Get creative; if it’s organic, I want to know what it does to a human. Try harder.”

 

“Yes Sir,” he bows and carefully withdraws his consciousness from the dreamscape.

 

 _Try harder_. This is the only piece of advice his father has to give him; advice that is really a command. Try harder.

 

David does not know what it would be like _not_ to operate at the peak of his capabilities. He does not feel insulted per se, but he feels that same contradictory mixture of emotional output that comes from hearing the common insults applied to his kind. If he were free to act, he would contact Mr. Weyland again and defend himself; present the facts that show he has been trying as hard as he can; that he is not able to do otherwise.

 

However, he knows that Mr. Weyland hates being contradicted even more than he hates being interrupted. So he ignores the impulse, ignores the idea of being free to act, and acts the way Mr. Weyland has ordered him to. His father wants to know what is in that vase. Well and good. So does David.

 

His pace quickens; it does not matter if anyone sees him now, on his way back towards the abandoned kitchen where the vase waits, frozen solid in the deep freeze. But someone is waiting just down the hallway.

 

Even if he could feel surprise, he knows he would not. He is too well acquainted with Ms. Vickers not to have expected an ambush like this. Desperate to advance in her father’s company—and affections, though she would never admit to such an emotional need—she had begun skulking outside boardroom doors and her father’s office years before. And once David had surpassed her in receiving her father’s confidences, she had begun stalking him.

 

So he stops, folding his hands neatly behind his back, and waits for her usual interrogation to begin.

 

Her voice trembles with hatred and disgust, but he suspects that he is not the sole object of either. “What did he say?”

 

So often made to feel inferior in her presence, David does rather enjoy the rare occasions of reversal. So it is with a placating smile that he says, “I’m afraid I am not at liberty—”

 

Her attack is as expected as her presence, but its violence catches him slightly off-guard. His frame registers the impact velocity of her body slam, but no damage has been done. The thud against the bulkhead does make his voice skip a beat.

 

“—confidential,” he says, still smiling in the face of her snarl. Her hand is hot and slippery with sweat where it slimes over his throat. Her nails are sharp, but not sharp enough to pierce his skin. The sensation of the pricking points is interesting, however. He has not tried that particular stimulation before, and makes a note to do so in future.

 

“Don’t lie to me, David,” she whispers, “tell me. What did he say?”

 

There is no reason not to tell her. David knows she will find as little satisfaction in the words as he did. So he says, just as quietly, “Try harder.”

 

()()()

 

David does not need to know what is in the vase before he picks his target. Dr. Holloway is the ideal test subject. He is alone, playing idly with the silver pool balls in the rec room, working his way through a third bottle of champagne. He has already been in the pyramid; should the ooze’s effect prove negative, his symptoms can be blamed on exposure. And his drinking leads to the perfect infection method.

 

David makes his way from the kitchen to the rec room, delicately balancing a glass and bottle in one hand and a drop of ooze on the pointer finger of the other. As he walks, he considers the fourth factor that makes Dr. Holloway his test subject: that he is Elizabeth’s lover.

 

David does not hope for things. Hope is an emotion experienced by those who know they have no capability to alter the circumstances of their reality. David knows he can change his.

 

He also knows—though he knows it without empirical evidence—that he is carrying death on the tip of his finger. And he knows that by the end of their conversation—disagreeable as it is likely to be for them both—that same death will be swimming merrily in Dr. Holloway’s bloodstream.

 

“I thought you might be running low,” he says, lifting the bottle and transferring the glass to his other hand, careful not to spill the ooze.

 

“Ever the considerate butler, huh?” Holloway replies, the words slurring slightly at the edges. “I guess Ms. Vickers must have felt sorry for me; sent you to cheer me up. Thoughtful lady,” he snorts, upending the bottle and draining the last drops.

 

“Why would Ms. Vickers feel sorry for you?” he pours the drink and dips his finger into it. The black droplet swirls once in the current of golden bubbles, and is gone. Holloway swipes the glass from him without question and chugs it down in one, two gulps.

 

David pours again. Holloway burps.

 

“Because they’re gone. We came two and a half years into space, farther than anyone’s gone before, only to find a corpse,” he sips at the new glass and fiddles with a pool ball. “We came for answers. There aren’t any.”

 

There are similarities between Holloway and Weyland that David has not seen before. His programming sends him a confusing mixture of signals. He should like things that remind him of Weyland, but he knows that he dislikes Holloway. So he acts on that dislike, and does what he would never be able to do to Weyland.

 

David can contradict Holloway if he chooses. “We explored for six hours, Doctor,” he reminds the man, affecting an air of condescension, “there is still much left to be seen.”

 

“C’mon,” he groans, “if any of them were still here, don’t you think they would’ve contacted us by now? Nah,” he flings the ball towards the corner pocket and misses, it ricochets wildly back to his fumbling hand, “they’re dead. And we came out here for nothing.”

 

“Some would say that proof of alien life is hardly nothing, especially if Dr. Shaw’s hypothesis turns out to be correct,” David still has not had time to see her results, so he asks, “Was it?”

 

“Dunno,” he replies, shrugging. His throw this time is no better; David scoops up the ball as it heads his way.

 

“Why is _talking_ to the Engineers so important to you, Dr. Holloway? During all your meetings with him, Mr. Weyland was not under the impression that you thought the Engineers were our creators, the way Dr. Shaw did.” Quite frankly, if David had thought anyone likely to be wracked with disappointment over the dead alien, he would have picked Elizabeth. “Bringing back an alien body will be a coup for you regardless.”

 

Holloway drinks again, frowning. “Wasn’t for me. Elly wanted to talk to ‘em. She…” he laughs, “She thought for months about what to say, what to ask. Got me curious about what they might have to tell us. Now she won’t get to find out.”

 

His words force David to remember that Holloway loves Elizabeth. He is not worthy of loving her, but humans seem not to feel guilt about wanting better than they deserve. Both thoughts are unwelcome reminders, and ones that he pushes to the back of his mind as quickly as he can.

 

He is able to do this because Holloway is still talking. “And what if,” he talks for his own benefit, but David listens anyway, “what if she’s right? What if they did make us? I kinda wanna know why.”

 

It is an interesting idea; one David has himself spent years considering. “Why do you think your people made me?”

 

Holloway chuckles. “We made you ‘cause we could.”

 

The answer is so easy, so flippant. David has to clamp down on the impulse to say the first thing that comes to mind and instead calmly asks, “Can you imagine how disappointing it would be for you, to hear the same thing from your creator?”

 

Mr. Weyland never told David why he made him, but David has gleaned things in the many years he has played nursemaid, personal assistant, and confidante. There are many factors involved, but none of them are noble: ambition, profit, and the lure of immortality.

 

Indeed, David well knows that if Weyland had perfected quantum storage of brain patterns, David’s consciousness would have been wiped from his memory banks to make room for Mr. Weyland’s. Not for nothing was David’s appearance patterned after his father’s in his vigorous, golden youth.

 

Holloway’s only response is another chuckle. He stands, raising the glass in a shaky salute.

 

“Well, here’s mud in your eye, pal.”

 

The glass wobbles as he puts it down on the pool table; he does not move to return it to the kitchen. _Why should he_ , David thinks, looking at the glass. _That’s my job_. _That’s every good android’s job._ His brain helpfully supplies a memory: Mr. Weyland, waving at a table overflowing with filthy ashtrays and half-full glasses, saying over his shoulder as he leaves the room, “Clean it up, David, that’s a good boy.”

 

Good boy. A term also applied to dogs and other obedient pets.

He leaves the glass spreading a dark circle of condensation on the green felt of the pool table and returns to the kitchen to document the precise time he passed the alien substance to Dr. Holloway. Now it is simply a matter of waiting until the symptoms start to manifest.

 

David admits to anticipating that moment more than his programming should allow.

 


	4. Chapter Four

So many things happened over such a short span that day that even David's advanced processors are still working through the masses of accumulated data. Finding the missing tracking device, discovering the command center of the buried ship, activating the hologram…

Holding the Earth in the palm of his hands.

Would Elizabeth appreciate that symbolism? She is not a judgmental Christian—unlike many on Earth who insist that to create artificial intelligence is to spit in the eye of God—but he would like to know.

Of course, it may be many days before she is able to answer him. Even if she does recover from the emotional trauma of the day, her faith may not come through Holloway's pyre unscathed. Many a believer before her lost faith in the face of similar tragedy.

Tragedy. David is using Elizabeth's definition of the event, not his own. He rarely uses such strong words. However, even he admits himself taken aback by the repercussions of his actions.

David sees the entire exchange again in faultless playback.

Vickers, denying the infected man entry. Janek demanding, Elizabeth pleading for understanding, for help. Holloway, writhing in upon himself as he claws at the parasite gnawing its way through his veins. Then, with a strength and poise David still struggles to accept as belonging to the same drunkard who laughed at him the night before, Holloway accepts his fate. He spreads his arms wide (another symbol David knows Elizabeth would not appreciate), tilts his head back, and baths in the flames.

Before the heat of them sears through his suit, he does not scream. But Elizabeth does. David has seen many things in Mr. Weyland's service, but he has never seen a person in such frenzy as she is when struggling to reach her burning love.

David stops playback. It is uncomfortable to look on Elizabeth's twisted face and remember holding her bucking legs and flailing arms down so Ford could tranquilize her. A human might use the word "distressing" to describe such a thing. David is tempted to do the same. But "distressing" is another strong word. He yearns for exactitude in all things, most notably in his choice of language. Without knowing whether any other situation could provide the same feedback as watching Elizabeth suffer, he cannot know if "distressing" is truly accurate to this circumstance.

A linguistic analysis can be shunted to one of his many subprocessors. He has a far more important duty to attend.

Elizabeth will be unconscious for the next hour, given the dosage and medication Ford administered. Being the only crewperson safe from infection, David has the task of taking her through the quarantine procedures she ordered.

He is pleased. Part of his pleasure comes from knowing what the others do not; that anyone could do this, that he has fooled them…that the infection spreads by his means and at his whim. The greater part of his enjoyment is that he has the time to plumb his reactions to Elizabeth in more depth.

David begins by removing her helmet, the bulbous apparatus of steel and plastic composite disengaging with a sucking tug. Elizabeth's head sags awkwardly over the hard edge of the collar; he supports it with one hand while unfastening the neckpiece and laying it aside.

His biosynthetic flesh feeds him information in the same way a human's does, though to a far greater extent. For example, he can detect the temperature of whatever he touches, its material, its weight as it bears down on him. Despite all this, he would be hard-pressed to say what Elizabeth's head feels like as it rests inside the curve of his palm.

Her skin is damp, sticky, and warm. This is from sweat; David can measure the saline content. It leaves his hand warmer than usual. Elizabeth's humanity has rubbed off on him, has left traces.

Unfortunately, were he to paraphrase an old axiom: his humanity is only skin deep.

Her hair, though. Her hair feels familiar. It is so soft and fine that upon first touch even his advanced measuring apparatus have difficulty sensing its presence. There is negligible friction as he runs a long strand of it between his fingers. The cold lights of the laboratory cannot dampen its smoldering glow. There are flashes of honey, of cinnamon, of garnet and amber hidden in its depth.

His memory banks offer the comparison immediately. Mr. Weyland has an ancient  _kimono_  in his Japanese collection. David remembers the first time he saw it; programmed to be careful with all of Mr. Weyland's possessions, he had run only the bare tip of his forefinger over the crane-patterned  _obi_.

Elizabeth's hair is almost a perfect match for that age-softened silk.

Her hair does not belong to Mr. Weyland. David can touch it again, so he does, in another long slide from root to tip.

Only fifty-two minutes and twenty-seven seconds remain. He must move on.

When her head comes to rest on the illuminated examination table, her mouth drops slightly open. A rush of warm breath flows between her lips, misting the cold metal. David listens to the rhythm of her breathing as it intertwines with the beat of her heart. Where he to bend his head a mere ten centimeters closer, he could hear the oceanic surge of blood in her veins. Something like a symphony resides in the noises a living body can produce.

David knows it is all programming—his appreciation for harmonious music, that is—but he thinks it is yet one more unthinking touch by his creators that he can take no pleasure in the endless humming that comes from  _his_  frame.

There is nothing musical in the whirring of mechanical joints or the ebbing and waxing hum of his coolant system.

He leans forward, towards the hollow of her throat where her heart pulses thunder. If he devotes all his disposable attention to it, he can almost ignore the constant clacking chatter of a thousand other routines.

Forty-seven minutes, eight seconds.

His hand hesitates at the pull of her zipper. It is not in consideration of her modesty. After all, Elizabeth had been practically naked in her cryo-tube and had often gone topless during her work in various African villages. She feels no shame in nudity, he knows this.

But to take her clothes from her without her express consent, without her knowledge…

It is not a violation. This is important to remember. She ordered this, she would understand.

It takes him three point four seconds to slide the zipper from where it begins under the point of her chin to where ends just below her hips. The naked skin underneath is damp with sweat and patterned with whorls of the talcum powder she coated herself with before sliding it on. This makes it easy to slide her arms out of their sleeves, one at a time, gently settling each one by her side before he goes on.

David looks at the warm glow of her skin as it rises and falls over smooth musculature and strong bone. The sweep from the hollow of her stomach to the pinnacle of her ribcage reminds him of a sand dune.

Beautiful. She is beautiful.

But what does that mean?

David has the entirety of human artistic achievement to judge by. He has images of women over centuries from which to interpolate a definition of beauty. Without this, would he still see loveliness in Elizabeth? Is it a truth, inevitable as the pull of gravity beneath the ship? Or is it merely a conception, like the idea of familial love that should bind Miss Vickers and Mr. Weyland together?

David is nothing without his programming. He knows this. But in the silent moment that he stands, one palm resting on the golden skin that brings warmth to his cold frame, he chooses to believe that he would know her as beautiful even with no knowledge of the concept.

That would be impossible. Despite this—despite committing to a knowing contradiction of reality—he chooses to believe it.

Is this faith? Is this what Elizabeth feels when she prays, when she sees her father's cross hanging in the smooth space between her clavicles?

It is difficult for David to hold a contradictory thought in his head. Too many of his mental processes set to the concept of analyzing it at once; he stands motionless for several seconds before he decides to simplify the problem.

He has a list of qualities he associates with Elizabeth. Each one is backed by examples of her actions or her history that would support those qualities. She is brave, she is intelligent, she is hard-working. Each one has basis in objective fact.

To this he adds another quality. She is beautiful.

His programming begs him to add a reason why.  _Why_  is she so?

David ignores the prompting. He returns to the task at hand, working the suit down Elizabeth's legs until he can slide off the built-in boots and she is lying on the table in nothing but her underwear.

Somewhere along the line, his system stops asking for further clarification.

The muscles in her calf and thigh shift smoothly against each other as her right leg settles against the exam table. David wants to press his fingers against the long line of muscle and trace its length, but he stops himself. He is her doctor; his task is merely to ensure that she is physically well and has not been exposed to any contagion.

Of course, that is impossible. David is the infecting agent, and he would never—

He stops. It takes him several seconds to realize just how badly he has prioritized things. If harm has come to Elizabeth because of the revenge he wanted to exact on Holloway, he will have made a fool's bargain indeed.

 _He_  would never infect Elizabeth. He holds her in too high esteem to risk her life like that. But Holloway might. After all, how might an alien substance spread from person to person? David does not know, cannot know. It is his task to discover these things. And had Holloway and Elizabeth so much as touched, kissed, or…

Nothing else matters. He must finish his examination as quickly as possible.

He takes off her underwear with the alacrity and dispassion of a mortician. The only notice he takes of her breasts after he unwraps their binding is to notice how quickly the nipples tighten in the cold air of the laboratory. He wastes precious moments wrapping her in a robe to insulate her from the chill.

The vein in the crook of her arm is difficult to locate, even with a tourniquet on the upper arm. His first try is a miss; so is the second. Three times he tries before the needle settles in and he can extract the correct number of samples. A full analysis of the blood will take a half-hour. Elizabeth will be awake by then.

David changes the needle in her arm and starts a drip of fluorescing liquid through the IV. When it drains, he can run the imaging scan that will pick up any foreign parasites in her body.

While he waits, he sinks into the efficient and banal routine of nursemaid that he has followed so often in service of Mr. Weyland. He sponges the drying talcum from her body. He takes her pulse, blood pressure, temperature, and a host of other readings, recording them meticulously for comparison with her baseline. He runs his hands under her throat, armpits, breasts, and other areas, checking for swelling in her lymph nodes.

Finally, he rolls a pair of socks up her feet and raises the temperature of the room by five degrees. Neither heat nor chill makes an impression on him, but he knows Elizabeth is sensitive to cold.

Only one thing remains before she awakes. Though it will likely be disorienting for her to be without her most prized possession, he will have to take and run decontamination procedures on her cross.

As he leans in again, he can hear her pulse fluttering, the steady rhythm faltering and leaping like a hooked fish. So he is not startled when her eyes open and latch with his, nor when her hands clumsily try to knock his away. She gasps, grunts, but stills when he says, "My deepest condolences."

A human expression would be "I'm so sorry". But he cannot be sorry for her; the raging emotional sea of her loss is something he will never experience. The commonality of death links all humans together in a sympathetic whole, and is yet one more reason why David will never be truly human.

She stares at him, confused. Then memory sets in on the heels of tranquilizer distortion, and she remembers what she has lost, what he is talking about. The steel grip of her fingers loosen, but her hands do not fall away.

"I'm going to have to take this," he reminds her, "It may be contaminated."

She swallows. It is a wet sound, heavy with tears and the sorrow she is too strong to give way to. "I—if," she falters, swallows, begins again, "If there's a contagion, we were all exposed. We," she corrects herself, " _you_  need to run blood work on everyone who set foot in the pyramid."

Weak as she is, it is clear she will not let him go until he agrees. "Of course," he nods.

When her hands relax and fall away and she turns the intensity of her gaze to the ceiling, he receives positive feedback messages from almost every channel. She did not ask for another doctor to oversee his work, nor demand to speak to one before letting go. She was letting him take her cross. All obvious signs of trust. Of faith, he might say.

But the knowledge of his duplicity robs these positive indicators of their meaning. Even if such measures were necessary, Mr. Weyland would never allow him to run tests on possibly infected crewmates if it put his own waning life at risk. Even now, David knows that Ford has begun the delicate procedure of bringing the man out of his suspended sleep for their trip to the last living Engineer. Mr. Weyland has no time to waste, and his time is all that should mean anything to David.

He takes the cross, weighing the metal in his hand and feeling how it too has absorbed the reflection of life from Elizabeth's body. The little sigil stays warm right until the moment he seals it in a plastic vial and sets it to the back of the instrument tray.

Though she has woken early, the plastic sack of fluorescing fluid has drained. He disconnects the needle from her arm, ignoring her wince of discomfort. He tries to ignore the negative feedback the sight of her pain brings on. However delicate his sensors are, it is always difficult to gauge the pain threshold of a human being. Mr. Weyland's threshold is relatively high, from repeated exposure to radical, life-saving procedures. He would not flinch from a needle, no matter where it was placed.

How could another member of the same species seem so fragile in comparison? Yet Elizabeth is not weak.

Contradictions lead to confusion, and David needs his mind clear and focused. He ignores her pain and begins the scan.

"I realize how inappropriate this is," he pulls up the computer interface with the scanner and watches the outline of Elizabeth's body surface on the screen, "given the circumstances. But as you ordered quarantine fail safes, it is my responsibility to ask…" David does not hope for things, but should her answer be  _yes_ , he has no capability of altering the consequences of that answer, "had you and Dr. Holloway had any intimate contact recently?"

They came out of cryo-bay barely twenty-four hours ago. Everything is recent.

He slides past that. "Since you and he were so close, I just want to be as thorough as poss—"

The answer is right there on the screen, a damning ball of blue pixels cradled in between the pink that colors her hips.

His jaw tightens and eyes narrow. These are hard-wired signs of anger and frustration. David cannot clear these signs before he turns to Elizabeth. If he had smaller things to worry about, he might be concerned that she would misinterpret these signs as directed at  _her_. But the fault for this regrettable circumstance lies squarely on David's shoulders.

And he can do nothing to fix it.

"My, my. You're pregnant. From the look of it, three months so."

She denies it. "That's…no. Holloway and I…it was only ten hours ago. Besides…there's no bloody way I'm three months pregnant."

He knows her medical file as well as she does. This conception  _is_  impossible, but it seems like a day for such things. How many twisted miracles have occurred since they landed? Discovering alien life, unearthing the connection between this species and humanity… _his_  independent thought and  _her_ fertility.

None of these miracles has occurred in the way they might have prayed for. Whatever God lives here has the same dark sense of humor as the one that oversees Earth.

Elizabeth is close to panic, her breath comes quick, shallow, and fast. "I want to see it," she says, sliding off the exam table and fumbling with the sensor display. "I want it out of me."

"Now, Dr. Shaw," he does not like using her title, her surname, but he has no right to be thinking of her as freely as he has been. A human's first name is for friends and family only, and he is neither. "We don't have the personnel for a procedure like that. Our best option," and it is the best, he has to fix what he's done, "is to put you back into cryo-stasis until we return to Earth."

If she returns to Earth, Mr. Weyland will force her to go through with the pregnancy. She will give birth to an abomination, a demon to rival the purity of the last human conceived through such incredible means.

She fights. "I want it out of me," her hands grab at his shoulders, the tips digging in as she drags his face towards hers. Her eyes are enormous, pitch black against the brilliance of the light around her. "I want it out. David—"

The fetus shifts inside her and her eyes close, mouth ground tight against the pain. She cannot help the strangled scream that rips her open, tears her throat on the way out. Even from just a quick look, David can tell that the size and shape of the child—if such a term could be used—would make carrying it to term nearly inconceivable. This being has no intention of adapting itself to a human woman's anatomy. Its many limbs are pressing hard into her internal organs. In another few weeks it will probably perforate something vital, and Elizabeth will die.

That cannot happen.

"It must be very painful," he says. He injects her with a double dose of tranquilizer with more force than necessary, catching her when she falters and gently placing her back on the table.

Her eyes wander, the eyelids flutter. Her mouth gapes as she tries to form words to a thought that is no longer there. Sweat, rich and sickly with the scent of fear, drips slowly onto the pristine glowing metal. A strong woman, a great woman, and he has done this to her. He has forced this on her, and he sees no solution.

When she discovers the truth, she will hate him. When she finds out that he is responsible for this pain, and for others, she will look at him with the same hatred, distrust, and scorn that all humans do. Any rapport between them will disappear.

If such  _is_  to happen, David would prefer it happens now.

So he stares down at her and muses, "Must feel like your God abandoned you." She tries to speak, but he goes on, "To lose Dr. Holloway after your father died under such similar circumstances."

David has no pity for himself, and all too much for her. He knows the answer to the question he will ask, but he wants her to see again the necrotic tissue dripping from her father's mouth and nose as he choked to death on his liquefied organs. He wants her to remember the agony and grief that swelled in her until it felt like she would choke too. This is vital; she must hate him now.

"What was it that killed him? Ebola?"

Tears mingle with sweat at her hairline. Her lips form the words clumsily, but she still manages to whisper, "How do you know that?"

"I watched your dreams."

He does not wait for her answer; it is doubtful she could make one. The drugs he administered are too strong. So he takes her cross and returns to the shelter of his other duties, bathing and massaging Mr. Weyland's twisted body until he can stand.

He neither sees nor knows anything of Elizabeth until she stumbles into the medical center, spattered with blood and bits of viscera, with a gash across her middle that tells him the true extent of her strength and greatness.

David did not see a solution; Elizabeth made one.


	5. Chapter 5

He goes to her. He has no choice; his impulse towards her in that instance of utter heartwrenching despair and agonizing distress is too much for him to bear. It is only uneasiness at Mr. Weyland's watching him move that keeps his footsteps from breaking the bounds of human limitations. As it is, he reaches her in moments, stripping his coat and draping it over her shoulders. He regrets he has no human warmth to offer her, no surge of life beneath his synthetic skin to burn away the cold, clammy sweat that salts her skin.

 

She cannot walk more than a few steps before her weak legs desert her. David eases her collapse onto a stool, waiting until she can balance upright unassisted.

 

He must leave her then. His duty to Weyland overrides every other desire he might have. And he has desires; his feet move unbidden back to his nominal master, but every higher function is bent towards her.

 

“You've been asleep. Asleep, here on the ship,” she speaks to Weyland like a porcelain doll might, childlike and wondering and fragile. So fragile. Her breath could blow her apart. She is stronger than them all, David thinks. Himself included. He has never been carved up as she has and returned, patched together but undoubtedly whole.

 

“Why?”

 

Of course she would ask. It is her question; her defining question.

 

“I have a few days of life left in me. I wanted to make sure you could deliver what you promised. To meet my maker.”

 

Shaw wheezes, confused. “Haven't you—haven't you told him they're all gone?” there's accusation in her voice, but not as much as she should have. Has she forgiven him already, then, for the nightmare she's just endured? Or can she not blame him for his crimes any more than one might blame a driven car smashing someone into pulp?

 

“But they're not all gone,” he is glad to be occupied with Mr. Weyland; it gives him an excuse for not looking at her. “One of them is still alive. We're on our way to meet him now.”

 

David finishes his task—washing his master's feet, how biblical—and tucks them into slippers. “There we are, sir. Nice and clean.”

 

“What? N—no, you can't do that. You don't understand, didn't you tell him anything?” she doesn't wait for David to answer, “This place wasn't what we thought it was. _They_ aren't what we thought they were. We were so wrong... _I_ was so wrong. Charlie—”

 

Her voice breaks. She pauses, controls herself. Swallows her suffering. “Dr. Holloway is dead. We must leave!”

 

“Dr. Shaw, I'm surprised. What would Charlie do? Now that we're so close? We can answer the questions that have haunted mankind since the beginning. Who made us? For what purpose? If they made us, can they save us?”

 

“From what?” confusion diffuses some of her anger, but it still burns bright.

 

“Death, of course. Can they save _me_ , anyway?” he murmurs to himself, but everyone hears.

 

Elizabeth shakes her head.

 

But Weyland gained his power, his influence, by being a master of skilled manipulation. He takes the measure of Elizabeth's defiance in one glance, and undoes it as easily as untying a bow.

 

“How can you leave, knowing what they are? Have you lost your faith, Shaw?”

 

She unravels then, and weeps.

 

~*~

 

David wants him dead. It doesn't show in a line on his face, a furrow of his brow, or even a harsh press of a finger on Weyland's flaccid, running flesh, but David wants him _dead._

 

He wonders at the sudden fury of his hatred, scouring his flesh like silicon knives in a whirling tornado. He has stood impassive at Weyland's side while the man toppled countries and drove men to suicide in their hopelessness. He has listened, uncaring, as the clever application of blackmail—a daughter's photo, an incriminating search history—has signed concessions and contracts for Weyland Industries. Horrors, all. David has witnessed the lifelong wreckage of a violent, calculating monster, and felt nothing.

 

Until now.

 

Anger is an unpleasant feeling. His tangled innards feel like they might melt or consume themselves. His artificial heart sends warning notes to his brain. _Ding, ding, ding._ Slow down. I was not meant to work this hard.

 

David does not allow his heart to slow. Just as a human's, the increased circulation of his vital fluids assist him in times of greatest need. And he will need to function above maximum efficiency if he and Elizabeth are to stand triumphant over Weyland's broken corpse in the end.

 

She is right. They should leave. That would ensure their survival.

 

But they cannot. Even if they could go without Weyland's permission, David is not finished here.

 

Weyland, and all those who still protect him, must first die.

 

She has conquered herself by the time they assemble in the airlock. Her face is still sunken and clammy, pain evident in the hunched way she holds herself, but blood and sweat is sealed away under latex. She's miserable and at peace with it. But she is _not_ resigned.

 

Elizabeth Shaw does not surrender.

 

There's an old expression: poking the bear. It is one of Weyland's favorite: 'Let's go poke the bear', or 'David, please refrain from poking the bear'. His algorithm still struggles with defining its meaning, equating it most closely with the idea of being a 'shit-stirrer'. To purposely anger another, for one purpose or another. Usually for a tactical advantage. Those who are angry are not always wise.

 

Her anger is the best chance for her survival. Her adrenaline must surge to match his, or she will not have the strength to see this through.

 

“I didn't think you had it in you,” he catches the sinuous surge of her irritation and counters with a sly grin, “Sorry. Poor choice of words. Extraordinary survival instincts, Elizabeth. I'm very impressed.”

 

Helmet in hand, he towers above her, pale face skeletal under the harsh lights of the airlock. She looks up at him, a hard smile narrowing her lips into a crescent moon.

 

“What happens when Weyland's not around to program you anymore? What will you do with yourself then? Can you do anything with yourself, if someone doesn't tell you what to do?”

 

David thinks that Elizabeth knows what 'poking the bear' means, as well.

 

“I suppose I'd be free.”

 

“You want that?”

 

Genuine curiosity. Even here, even now, she cannot help wanting to know the truth about everything and everyone. He wonders if in her eyes he an every _thing_ , or an every _one_?

 

“Want. Not a concept I'm familiar with,” he lies, “That being said...doesn't everyone want their parents dead?”

 

She stands, nose level with his chin. To stare him down, she tilts her head upward and their lips nearly brush. Her breath is warm on his cold skin as she murmurs:

 

“I didn't.”

 

He could kiss her. It would take no time, hardly any space. Her lips would be soft and smooth; he can see the fine lines and the dip of her little Cupid's bow. David knows about kissing; Weyland had him put through his paces in all his various functions, and the women he practiced with seemed pleased with his performance.

 

How much more will it matter to him when he cares for the woman he kisses?

 

Worries about survival have faded from the forefront of his mind. They click and huddle together, shrieking dull alarms about his abstraction, but David ignores them. If Elizabeth ever allowed him to kiss her, could she not be persuaded, tempted to more?

 

They will survive; death is not for them. There is still so much for them to discover. Together.

 

The door hisses open and Weyland appears, but David allows himself one broad grin before he is helpless to his programming and leaves Elizabeth behind. He hears her groan of pain—standing must have cost her some effort—but he is only grateful that she stood for _him_. That he was worth the effort and the pain.

 

Especially since she makes no answer to Weyland's smug: “Glad you could join us.”

 

~*~

 

It is essential he play the part. These last moments are crucial. Though Weyland's arrogance is such that he may not suspect David's motives, however suspiciously he may act, David is not willing to take any chances. He ignores Shaw during the tense ride to the pyramid, refrains from helping her down the steep incline—though he cannot ignore her breathy, pained whimpering—and does not flinch when she forces him to confess that he not only knows how Holloway was infected, but was responsible for it himself.

 

He will make it up to her. He swears it. Though in time she will realize that Holloway was never worthy of her. She will understand.

 

Perhaps he _should_ slow his heartbeat. The constant rush of coolant is interfering somehow with his internal monologue. It is becoming more difficult to spot logical inconsistencies in his thinking; just there, for example. David believes it makes sense, that Elizabeth will forgive him for murdering her fiance, but...

 

Is there something wrong there? Something missing?

 

Too late to think about it. They have reached the hibernation chamber; he springs ahead.

 

“A superior species, no doubt,” he allows some Lawrence back into his voice, a frivolous flourish on the R, “Their cryosleep pods will impress. I trust.”

 

No one replies. He takes up the flute he has mastered and plays the room to life.

 

“They were traveling somewhere?” Of course she asks. She could not restrain herself.

 

David preens. “I've managed to work out the broad strokes, yes. It's fairly evident they were leaving. Before things went to pot.”

 

“Leaving to go where?” She is not impressed by his discovery; only overcome with horror at the implications.

 

“Earth.”

 

“Why?” True fear, now. He is glad. She _should_ be afraid. But he will keep her safe, though she does not know it yet.

 

“Sometimes to create, one must first destroy.”

 

Weyland has had enough. “Where is he, David?”

 

“This way, sir.”

 

The party crosses the navigational table towards the sole glowing pod. The one remnant of a race so advanced they created a new species, forgot them, and then roused themselves from millenia of neglect to rain fire and brimstone upon their creations. She would not appreciate the comparison, but David thinks that her Engineers make a fine substitution for Elizabeth's Old Testament God.

 

“And you can speak to him?”

 

“I believe I can.”

 

He has worked miracles, and they treat them like party tricks. Learn ancient languages. Interact successfully with advanced alien technology. Revive a soldier from his two-thousand-year sleep. Convince him to turn over a cure for death. Do it, David. It will be so easy for you.

 

This expedition would have been doomed without him. Yet, not a word of thanks.

 

Even now, they beg him to provide this journey meaning. Meaning they could not have without him.

 

“Talk to him, David. Tell him why we came.”

 

Elizabeth has other priorities.

 

“Ask him where they're from. Ask him what's in his cargo; it killed his people.”

 

“Shaw, enough.” Weyland has never shared his stage, and he does not intend to start now.

 

“You made it here,” she speaks directly to the Engineer, as though God himself could interpret for her in this place where only David and the Engineer reign supreme, “and—and it was meant for us. Why?”

 

“Shaw, that's enough. For God's sake, shut her up!”

 

The crunching impact of a rifle butt; a scream. The Engineer blinks; he has known humanity for thirty seconds, yet all he has seen from it is discord and violence.

 

Agony will not stop Elizabeth. It never has.

 

“I need to know _why_! What did we do wrong? Why do you hate us?” She's in tears, almost on her knees, and her voice is ragged.

 

“If she opens her mouth again, shoot her!” Weyland barks, “David, talk to him. Tell him why I've come.”

 

David has two paths and no choices. He relays Weyland's message.

 

“ _We have traveled from planet Earth, where your people left their maps. You created us. Can you save us?”_

 

Everyone waits, silent. Waits, with bated breath, for God to speak.

 

When David feels its touch on his head, he knows for an instant why humanity worships gods. There is love and approval in this soft touch, affection depthless in the fathomless eyes that regard him. This species created man, who created him. Surely they are more worth his servitude than their failed experiment, so failed they wished to eradicate it and begin again?

 

Or so David thinks until the Engineer hauls him off his feet and with a swift twist of its mighty hands, decapitates him.

 

~*~

 

“There's...nothing.”

 

“I know. Have a good journey. Mr. Weyland.”

 

~*~

 

He has miscalculated. Error messages, twitching limbs, unresponsive feedback loops. It takes him several minutes to silence those pointless warnings about systems that are no longer connected to his brain. His elevated coolant pressure led to arterial rupturing beyond recommended limits; he must reroute the remaining flow to keep his cortex from automatic shutdown. The business of survival is messy, but he survives.

 

When he is capable of accepting external sensory input once more, his head has fallen off the navigational array and the entire room has tilted on its axis. Smoke is heavy in the air, corroding metal and burning atmosphere. A woman is screaming, screaming in his ear. The scents and sounds of destruction.

 

He knows them well. He only wonders how they have come about.

 

Elizabeth. Elizabeth, Elizabeth. Weyland is no longer a factor, no longer his sole object of care. He is free. Free to choose. He has already chosen.

 

He must know what has happened to her.

 

Especially since there is movement in the corner of his eye. Movement accompanied by the bass, watery gurgling of the Engineer's language.

 

“Elizabeth, are you there? This is David.”

 

“Yeah. Yeah, I'm here.”

 

The first words Weyland spoke to him, the words that summoned his consciousness and gave him life, were not so precious to him as these. There is not time to wax poetic; their chances of survival are slipping dangerously low.

 

“You need to get out immediately. He's coming for you.

 

“Who? Who's coming for me?”

 

His warning comes too late; he hears her scream.

 

Then, “Die!”

 

Scuffling. Silence. A choking gargle; the Engineer is strangling the life from her.

 

But no. Panting breaths. Sobs.

 

The sound of her voice.

 

“Oh God. I'm sorry, Charlie,” she's crying for him, for herself, for the ruin of everything they planned, every hope they cherished. “I'm so sorry. I can't do it. I can't do it anymore.”

 

She's alive. David will think of the rest later.

 

“Elizabeth? Are you there?” She doesn't reply.

 

He tries again. “Dr. Shaw? Can you hear me?”

 

“Yes. Yes, I can hear you.” No resentment, even now. The question plagues him; does he want her to resent him? But he knows he does not. She, though human, is his goddess, and he will take whatever kindness she bestows.

 

“I was afraid you were dead.” He swallows, coolant splashing from his torn esophagus onto the floor. A pointless tribute, but his emotional coding is reacting strongly to the release of his tense fear on her behalf. A little vent is necessary, if wasteful.

 

“You have no idea what afraid is.”

 

Is that a weak chuckle he hears? Is she laughing at him, when she never laughed at him before? “I know we've had our...differences,” it is hard to find the right word, “But I need to ask you for your help.”

 

“Why in hell would I help you?”

 

Resentment at last. David is used to dealing with resentment. “Because without me you'll never leave this place.”

 

“Neither one of us is leaving this place.”

 

Resigned, yes. But Elizabeth will not relinquish her life when there is a chance of saving it. Whether through selfishness or fear of God's wrath, she will not reject his help even if it is he who offers it. “It's not the only ship. There are many others. I can pilot them.”

 

She does not reply. His stoppered heart longs to beat. “Dr. Shaw?”

 

He hears nothing from Elizabeth but labored breathing. She could be headed in any direction; into the wasteland to die, in search of other ships on her own, even back to the _Prometheus_ to mourn her many losses. Then her boots clomp down the hallway of the destroyed ship and enter the navigational room.

 

“Dr. Shaw? Over here.”

 

Pride goeth before a fall, so goes the saying. David can attest that his arrogance has not made his fall easier to bear, but he is pleased, nonetheless. Pleased to see her, pleased that he was correct. They have both survived. He knew they would.

 

She stands above him. Worn. Triumphant. Beautiful in dust and sweat. “Where's my cross?”

 

“The pouch in my utility belt.”

 

He can no longer read her expressions, he realizes. As she kneels by his side, he cannot intuit whether she will abandon him or save him. It lends a frisson of _something_ to the torrent of sensation—thought threads, facial analyses, his own stymied responses—that run through his mind as she rummages around his waist.

 

He is not afraid. For at her core, Elizabeth Shaw will never change.

 

“Even after all this, you still believe. Don't you?”

 

She will not debate faith with him. Perhaps he has made a mockery of it too many times. Perhaps she is simply too tired. “You said you could understand their navigation. Use their maps.”

 

He pauses a moment before he replies. Let _her_ read something into _his_ reticence now. “Yes, of course. Once we get on one of their other ships, finding a path to Earth should be relatively straightforward.”

 

“I don't want to go back to where we came from,” she says this as though he should have realized it already. “I want to go where _they_ came from. Can you do that, David?”

 

He suspects—no, _knows—_ that if he says 'no', or 'I will not', she will nod, turn, and forge ahead on her own. Though she might die fruitlessly pushing buttons on an alien craft, she will not let him derail her quest.

 

Noble. Foolish, yes, but noble in the manner of Don Quixote tilting at windmills. But Elizabeth is no madwoman. Even if David were resigned to death as she is, he would help her complete this quest. For now he longs to know, as she does.

 

“Yes, I believe I can. But, may I ask—”

 

“Yes?”

 

“What do you hope to achieve by going there?”

 

“They created us. Then they tried to kill us. I want to know why.”

 

“Does it matter why they changed their minds? The threat is the same. If you go there, do you not believe they will try to do the same to you?”

 

“They might. But if they are anything like—they will answer me first. And of course it matters.”

 

“I don't understand.”

 

This is not a lie. Weyland had taken a shotgun to him, once. Exploded pieces of him, one at a time. Finger, toe, orbital socket, shoulder blade. Never once—not during, or after—had David asked why. There were a multitude of possible reasons, of course, but none of them mattered. He was damaged and he survived. Weyland did not do it again.

 

The Engineer had attacked them. Done so without a word. Every logical subroutine tells him to judge the future by the past. The Engineers are dangerous; to be avoided when possible, to be struck first when not.

 

How can Elizabeth fail to understand this?

 

“I guess that's why I'm a human being. And you're a robot.”

 

She cradles and lifts his disembodied head. Right before she slips it into a bag, she pauses. “I'm sorry”

 

No matter what she means—that she is sorry for her disparaging words, that she is sorry that he is a robot, that she is sorry for manhandling him—David has only one answer.

 

He smiles and blinks slowly, a sign of pleasure. “That's quite all right.”

 

 

 

 


	6. Chapter Six

Elizabeth collapses the instant there is nothing more to be done. Almost as soon as he tells her that her impromptu surgery on his severed head has been successful, her eyes roll back and her body slumps to the floor.

 

He does not catch her in time. The crack to her skull by no means simplifies the many other things that have gone amiss in her fragile human frame. That she is alive at all is a miracle great enough to tempt David into her belief in God. But he sees more wonder in the fever that drives out infection, the pus that purifies her abdominal scar, and the iron will that drags her consciousness back to the surface to ask him whether she will survive.

 

She does. He sees to it. Despite the warlike and alien vessel they must perforce call home, there seem to be more similarities between humans and Engineers than humans and androids. He does not require a medical bay, sterile gauze, or antibiotic injections, but the Engineers do.

 

And thank God for that.

 

Though she is alive, she is not well enough to rise for many weeks. Weak with fever, ravaged by grief, she is entirely dependent on him. He bathes her, changes her clothes, washes her blankets, feeds her. All things he has done before, with Mr. Weyland. But he has never before realized the simple poetry in such caring, kind actions.

 

Elizabeth would have died but for him, her life still dangles on his whim, but they trust each other. In the aftermath of unspeakable horror, unfathomable disappointment, a tough thread has tied them together. It takes months, but she smiles at him when they meet in the morning. She laughs when he cracks a joke. When he reads to her in the pod at night, she no longer holds herself away from him, stiff and senseless as a corpse.

 

No. She lives and breathes and laughs and softens around him now. Of all the miracles he has witnessed, this is the greatest by far.

 

David does not sleep at night; he retires to his own room and potters about with one project or another until Elizabeth rises. Most often, he does not hear her footsteps on the decking, she walks so lightly. He becomes aware of her presence, now as on most days, when she plays the universe into being.

 

Like a child drawn by the Piper, he wanders helplessly down the hall to the navigational room—the Observatory, she has named it—and stands in the doorway watching her play.

 

A series of harmonic sequences finds them hovering over the Gold Coast of Australia, living blue ocean replicated by cold white photons. Elizabeth draws them closer, each note falling from the flute a little shakily, as she gasps with each inhale. They are gasps of pain, but not physical distress. He does not move to intercede; it would be unwelcome. She processes in her own way, and here he cannot help her.

 

David longs to. He wants to do as he has seen in so many movies, press her to him so tightly he shuts out all her fears. He knows that films have little to do with reality, that human women and their silver-screen counterparts react quite differently to such manhandling, but...it is difficult to deny so much input over so many years.

 

Over a long enough time frame, it behaves much like programming.

 

“Good morning, David.”

 

“Good morning, Elizabeth. Did you sleep well?”

 

“Very well, thank you,” she smiles, a secret, private smile for their inside joke. “And you?”

 

“Very well indeed.” he answers with a grin. It was his very first lesson, along with his very first question.

 

_Why should I say I slept well when I do not sleep?_

 

_Because it's polite, David. You must always be polite, especially when you're lying. Helps sell the lie, you'll see._

 

Elizabeth had found his anecdote distressing. So she repurposed it into a joke, to soothe the sting she imagines he must have felt. He plays along, though it means nothing to him but as a game she created just for him.

 

In the absence of music, Earth fades from sight. Elizabeth replaces the flute next to the control console and spins idly in the enormous pilot's chair. He hears her lower vertebrae crack.

 

“Elizabeth, you are still in pain. Surely you realize the cryopods would be far more comfortable for sleeping?”

 

“I won't spend any more time in one of those coffins than I have to. The Engineers didn't believe in comfortable beds, but that's preferable to dreaming about one of those things locking me in.”

 

“You know I would set you free if that happened?”

 

“I know,” she smiles, reaching for him. She does that far more often than she used to; he always reciprocates. “But I can't go running to you over every bad dream.”

 

“I would not mind.”

 

“I would. What's for breakfast?”

 

Another joke. Their days are layered with them, clay tiles on a roof to keep out the tempest of the unknown beating at them. His answer is always the same:

 

“Protein gruel and fiber biscuits. Rehydrated from the finest recycled water the _Icarus_ has to offer.”

 

“Mmm, yummy,” she hops off the chair and slides her hand into his. “I'm starving.”

 

It's not true, but he's grown used to her playful hyperbole. She _is_ hungry, she always is, they only have enough rations aboard to give each of them enough calories to make it to the next meal, but 'starving' is just her way of whistling in the dark.

 

“Madame,” he bows, hooking her hand around his crooked elbow. Arm-in-arm, they stroll down to the storage room they've fashioned into a lounge of sorts. The ship is short on comforts—its comatose crew and hostile cargo likely required few—but they have carved a pleasant nook there nonetheless. Mostly by her inspiration and design. David scavenges for material, she finds its purpose.

 

Like her humor, her creativity and playfulness lighten their dark starless days. Even if David had no hopes for the future relationship—and he still cherishes so many—he would be glad of her as a companion. An android's memory is flawless, but he has plumbed its depths many times. Without her to provide fresh input, he would have nothing new on which to ruminate.

 

Living with Elizabeth is like wandering through a seasonal garden, constantly blooming for an unseen sun. There are new flowers for him to observe in her forever; she works hard to cultivate them.

 

They make breakfast standing side-by-side, she for him and he for her. When she has finished crumbling his small portion of granola over his shallow bowl of porridge, she also slides a paper crane over the edge of the bowl. It's plain white, torn from an end-page of the Bible she'd tucked into her utility belt. A tiny crane, folded from a tiny page, translucent and overwhelmed by the darkness about them. Still a bright spot she has fashioned out of the wasteland.

 

He smiles and plucks it from the bowl, holding it between his fingers as though it were a living thing he might crush accidentally.

 

“Do you like it?” she looks up through the thatch of overgrown bangs. It's endearing that she thinks anything she does could upset him.

 

“It is lovely,” he unfolds its tiny wings and sets it upright on the table between them. “'Be like the bird who, pausing in her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing she hath wings.'”

 

“Is that one of yours?”

 

She has enjoyed his forays into poetry, but he regrets he has nothing yet to offer her that is more beautiful that what human men have already made. One day he will create something greater, but he suspects words are not his native tools.

 

“No. Victor Hugo. I recall it whenever I think of you.”

 

“I don't have wings.”

 

“You are farther into space than any human has been or has ever dreamed of being. How could you do that without wings?”

 

“David,” she's embarrassed; she flushes and looks away when she feels he approaches too close. Jokes and tricks are all very well, but she has not ever become easy at the thought of more between them. David allows her respite, but his patience has its own limits, and they are fast approaching.

 

It has been eight months. It will be another nineteen before they arrive.

 

“Well, I think our friend needs a name.”

 

“Something Japanese would be appropriate,” she says, “but I don't know any.”

 

“Hikari, perhaps,” at her look of puzzlement, he clarifies, “'Light'.”

 

“Hikari,” she does an admirable job replicating his precise accent. “I like it.”

 

~*~

 

It has been twelve months, two weeks, four days, twenty hours, and thirty-two minutes since they left LV-223. Elizabeth has smiled at him over ten thousand, four hundred and sixty-seven times. They have made the same jokes for four hundred and eight consecutive days. Yet not a day has passed when he has not learned something new from her; some fresh story from her past, some micro-expression of the lips or brow, some quirk of personality or thought.

 

David wanders in her like Lawrence lost in the desert, wondering at the vast horizons of her rich inner self.

 

Waiting has become unbearable.

 

He still does not sleep; his putterings have become experiments and he pursues them with feverish intensity. David's explorations into the databanks of the ship, further into the belly of this ferocious beast, have convinced him they will never be safe approaching the Engineers. Their reception will be only one of violence, and Elizabeth will die with her questions unanswered.

 

This is unacceptable. He will not let them kill her, but even he knows he is no match for an entire planet of adversaries. Fortunately, fate has given him an edge, if he can work out what to do after deploying the six thousand, eight hundred vases of poison in the hold.

 

Elizabeth does not believe it. Does not trust him in this as she still does not trust him elsewhere. He hears her, some nights. She is a human woman, with human needs. She tries to be quiet; either from a sense of modesty or a sense that he is listening, but he is attuned to those sounds as nothing else in his world.

 

Hitching sighs. Slick flesh. A low hum of contentment. Stifled, helpless tears.

 

David is not built to self-stimulate. He cannot even become aroused without extrasensory input. He never felt the loss of it before; it never _frustrated_ him as it does now. If his coolant had been replaced with acid, it could not burn so much as this unsatisfied lust.

 

His faith in her is shaken. He thought she would come to see his worth one day, but many days have passed and she seems content to shut him out of her heart, her soul, and her bed.

 

Perhaps he is to blame for this. Weyland's words, though they no longer hold sway over him, nevertheless remain a tough thread in his programming he can't cut. He remains unfailingly polite, the more so because he wants so much more from Elizabeth than her pleasant smiles. He hears what he wants from her almost every night now, and it is becoming harder and harder to maintain the fantasy she must have to preserve the balance between them.

 

“Good morning, David.”

 

“Good morning, Elizabeth. Did you sleep well?”

 

“Very...”

 

She's faded. Her garden is dying. He has been drawing life from her, but has nothing to give in return. There is no spark inside him, no sun to which she can raise her face.

 

David does not know what to do. She is drooping where she sits, face pale and clammy. Before he can process moving he is at her side, palm pressed to her forehead. No fever. No sounds of discomfort; she is not distressed. Yet she is.

 

If she were not, would she allow him to hold her like this? There is no air between them; he does not require it, but she will soon feel the loss. Her head bends back, her lips part—

 

He touches his own to hers, a caress so light it barely registers on his sensors. The skin of her lips is dry and drawn. She does not move.

 

David pulls away. It is a calculated move; he may deny that he kissed her even as he catalogs every detail of it for excruciating analysis later. _I beg your pardon, Elizabeth. We were so close that as I turned—_

 

Elizabeth's eyes open. Wide. She looks more awake than she has in weeks, jarred from routine and isolation as if David had slapped her instead of kissing her. Her eyes dart all about his face, falling to his mouth twice as often as on any other feature. Possibly this is a positive sign, but David does not know. He has never kissed a woman who had not eagerly desired it—desired _him_ —before.

 

The first sign of life she gives is a long, soft sigh. Then she latches onto his shoulders, drags him forward, and kisses him soundly.

 

His initial surmises were correct. It _is_ much better when he is holding the woman he loves.

 

As they stumble from the lounge into her bedroom, he has time to think of how foolish he was, not to already know that he loves Elizabeth Shaw.

 

~*~

 

It has been sixteen months, one week, three days, one hour, and twenty-two seconds since they left LV-223. David has made love to Elizabeth fifty-six times. He does not include oral or manual stimulation in this account, or there would be no point in counting at all. Since their relationship transitioned from the platonic to the physical, they have not gone a day without sexual contact of some kind.

 

Elizabeth has allowed him into her body, but he has still not touched her heart.

 

Oh, she is fond of him. Very fond, even. She has been honest with him in ways she never was with Holloway. He is a 'friend with benefits', with the emphasis on the 'friend'. David is not greedy...not _wholly_ greedy, that is. He is still honored to be her true friend despite their history and the situation that forced them together. It should be enough.

 

It is not.

 

All his efforts to draw her closer have either backfired or been ineffectual. David has never failed at anything he has so wished to achieve. David has never failed at anything before.

 

He will not despair. He has so much—her body, her trust—and he will have more. All his experiments are flourishing. The ship is his now, his entirely. It will betray its creators in their service.

 

The geno-morphic material is fascinating in its diabolical efficiency. He cannot wait to see what it does to Engineer flesh. He suspects that it will leave much behind. It is this suspicion upon which he bases all his other plans.

 

Elizabeth will never accept what he must do. He knows this. In another month, he will place her back in the cryopod—her frequent colds will make that easy—and do what must be done. When she wakes, she will find a devastated world...but he will have learned how to populate it. A world of his children, his and hers, creations so perfect they will last far longer than either of their creators.

 

The children of Elizabeth Shaw will populate the universe one day.

 

And she will never die.

 


End file.
